Stuck in China?

Slept really good on the train. Hard sleepers are fine. There was a local in my birth that was anxious to practice his english, so he was enthused to have me there.  The train ride this morning was quite something. Lots of tunnels, but when we came out, steep mountains and deep gorges all around, then, wham, another tunnel. Very smoggy, though, could barely see across the valleys, lots of pollution here from factories in the mountains (that's what my Chinese friend told me).

Got to Chengdu around 2:15 in the afternoon and took a taxi to Lazy Bones Hostel. I had a brochure which had the address in Chinese, so it was easy. Lisa stayed at this hostel earlier and recommended it. I booked a Sichuan Opera for tonight (Lisa's recommendation) and a panda tour for tomorrow morning. I then asked about booking a train from Chengdu to Xi'an for tomorrow night. According to the website they used, there were hard sleepers available, but when he called, he was told they were all full. He suggested I go to the train booking suboffice just down the street. He wrote my request down in Chinese for what I wanted, then wrote a second request for a ticket from Xi'an to Shanghai for Thursday night, May 12.

I found the booking office and she didn't speak a lick of english, so I gave her the note hostel buddy wrote for me. She found a hard sleeper that leaves at 2:50pm tomorrow (195 RMB). It arrives in Xi'an at 9:00am the following morning. I wanted more time in Chengdu, but oh well.

Then I showed her the flip side (Xi'an to Shanghai for May 12), she looked it up, then started beaking in Chinese, I said Ting Boo Dong, but that didn't matter, she kept going anyway. She showed me the screen, which had a bunch of 0's in all the columns, then she wrote NO on my piece of paper and gave it back to me.

Uh-oh! How was I going to get back to Shanghai? My mind started racing, considering options (bus? plane?), then I wrote Fridays date on the (2011/05/13) on the piece of paper and took it back to her. She looked it up and luck! I got a 7:46pm train from Xi-an to Shanghai to on Friday night, arriving in Shanghai at 11:00am Saturday morning. So, three days in Xi'an and only about 1 in Shanghai.

I walked to the main square to see a giant statue of Mao. Chengdu is a pretty modern city.

Back to the hostel and vegged, journal, ate supper, then at 7:30, headed to the opera. There was another couple also from our guest house and a girl from Manitoba from Mix hostel, a sister hostel to Lazy Bones

Opera was awesome. It's famous for face changing, where the performers masks appear to change by magic, in a flash. It was pretty cool. One woman's dress even changed in the blink of an eye.

After the opera, back to the hostel and to bed.

One thing I noticed, locals almost always seem to assume that you speak Chinese. Even if you tell them you don't understand (Ting Boo Dong), they keep talking anyway, maybe thinking you'll pick up the odd word here or there anyway.